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Detroit Free Press staff

Former Free Press photographer Steve Nickerson / Detroit Free Press

Former Detroit Free Press photographer Steven Nickerson has died at age 55 after a long battle with a rare autoimmune disorder known as scleroderma, reports the Denver Post.

He died at his home in Colorado on Saturday with his headphones on listening to his favorite music.

Nickerson came to the Free Press from Kentuckyís Lexington Herald-Leader in 1987 and worked here for eight years before eventually moving on to the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

With a 6-foot-4 frame, and eccentric personality and a love for hard rock and heavy metal music, Nickerson could initially be an intimidating figure. But as Free Press columnist Mitch Albom noted in a 2006 column about Nickersonís disease, ďbeneath that wild, frenetic exterior beat the heart of big softie, who would cry easily, who would give you a mighty bear hug, who charmed senior citizens and immigrants and children, who spent months chronicling a dying kid in a wheelchair whose last passion was Michigan's Fab Five basketball team. Those are the kind of stories Nickerson liked to tell with his photos.Ē

Nickerson won several awards throughout his career, including being parts of teams that won two Pulitzer Prize awards at the Rocky for coverage of the Columbine shootings and Colorado wildfires.

Donations in Nickersonís memory can be made to the Anchor Center for Blind Children in Denver, where he volunteered, or Johns Hopkins Scleroderma Center in Baltimore, Md.